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and Asia Minor, the latter through Syria and Egypt. Each group had
branches which entered Asia near Aleppo and diverged in the direction
of Tabriz and Bagdad. On all routes there were what in America are
compendiously termed long hauls and short hauls; that is to say,
wares which travelled most of the way, as Western silver and coral and
Eastern silk and spice, and wares which travelled only part of the
way, as sugar, cotton, and Arabian gums. It was possible, also, for
merchants who dealt in goods of the former class to travel the whole
road or to go only part of it and sell or exchange their commodities,
which would be carried on by other hands. For most goods the southern
routes, especially that by the Red Sea, were cheaper, because they ran
mostly by sea;[1] but this consideration was less important in the
case of the costlier spices, especially as they were liable to suffer
damage in the holds of ships. It was not so much, however, the question
of expense as political and religious conditions which determined what
routes would be preferred. If merchants are hindered by one route, said
Marino Sanuto the Elder, they find another, like water, and they never
cease seeking a way which will bring them more profit.[2]
At the beginning of the fourteenth century five routes were most in
use: the land road through Tana from the mouth of the Don north of the
Caspian Sea to China; the way through Trebizond to Tabriz and central
Asia; the two roads from Lajazzo (Ayas) at the head of the Gulf of
Alexandretta, one by Tabriz, the other by Bagdad and the Persian Gulf
to India and beyond; and finally the route by the Nile, Kosseir, the
Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean to southern and eastern Asia.[3] The
north road was practicable as far as China for the century between
1240 and 1340, while the Mongol Empire was strong.[4] During this time
foreign merchants, missionaries, and travellers were protected, and
encouraged to traverse the vast Mongol territories freely.[5] These
were still pagan in 1291, though the western divisions turned Moslem
soon after that date. The routes which entered at Trebizond and Lajazzo
nourished the small Christian states of Trebizond and Lesser Armenia,
which served as vestibules to the Mongol lands.[6] Between them lay
Asia Minor, the land of the Turk, broken at the time into ten small
emirates, hostile in the interior to Christian strangers, but dealing
freely at its ports with Western traders, and beginning to develop a
commercial and piratical shipping.[7] Palestine and Egypt were under
the Mameluke sultans, who permitted no foreign Christian to cross their
dominions,[8] but who, as well as their subjects, derived great profit
from a large trade between West and East. Christian cities, especially
Venice, Genoa, and Barcelona, traded regularly at Alexandria.
The popes never forgave the Mamelukes for expelling Western Christians
from the Holy Land,[9] and after repeated efforts they succeeded in
the second quarter of the fourteenth century in reducing Christian
commerce with Alexandria to small proportions. Hence the trade by the
other routes increased, and the prices of comparatively bulky Eastern
wares like pepper and ginger became higher in the West.[10] But the
Mongol empire disintegrated rapidly, first into large states, then into
a multitude of small ones which threatened anarchy. In consequence,
from about the year 1340 the northern through route to China ceased to
be practicable and the ways through Persia became difficult.[11] This
was the first obstruction, or rather breaking up, of the trade-routes,
and in it the Ottoman Turks, who then formed a small though vigorous
principality, had no part. But since all the Levantine routes were now
restricted in one way or another, the Venetians and Genoese appealed to
the pope for assistance; and a system of licences to trade with Egypt
was developed, which in time restored the commerce of the southern
route to its old prosperity. Subject to temporary fluctuations, spices
With Florence, Ancona, and other commercial cities which had no lands
in the Levant and strove for none relations were uniformly good.[25]
The Turks even confirmed or granted privileges of trade in their
ports beyond what were allowed in the West, and some of their rules
as regards duties were more liberal than elsewhere.[26] But no doubt
generous provisions were not infrequently frustrated in particular
cases by grasping officials, who, by the way, were usually renegade
Christians.[27]
After his conquest of Trebizond Mohammed II came into conflict with
Venice in 1464 and took some of her Levantine territory. War followed
for nine years, in the course of which a new route of Eastern trade was
temporarily opened.[28] The Venetians formed an alliance, both military
and commercial, with the Turkoman Uzun Hassan, and some regions of
southern Asia Minor, which had not been recovered by the Ottoman Turks
since the time of Timur, furnished an opening through which spices
could pass for a short time to Satalia, the present Adalia. Mohammed,
however, annexed the southern regions, inflicted a severe defeat upon
Uzun Hassan, and forced the Venetians to a favourable peace. Soon after
this he took the Genoese possession of Kaffa in the Crimea, subjugated
the Tartars of that neighbourhood, and obtained complete control of
the Black Sea. The trade to the East through that sea was already
practically gone. Some Genoese remained in Kaffa, and the Venetians
obtained sailing and trading rights which were continued formally
for sixty years.[29] But for about three centuries the Black Sea was
used by hardly any other ships than those of the sultans subjects.
A considerable trade upon it supplied Constantinople with food and
various raw materials, some of which were exported to the West.[30] The
conquests of Mohammed II undoubtedly contributed in some degree to the
obstruction of the northern routes, but their importance, both in time
and extent, was secondary. What measure of reduction they accomplished
in the Levant trade at the north served to increase the trade along the
southern routes,[31] and we have seen that these conquests accomplished
no discernible permanent elevation of prices in the West.[32]
In the war of Bayezid II with the sultan of Egypt, during the years
1485 to 1491, caused by the latters giving asylum to the formers
brother, Prince Jem, the Turkish troops were thoroughly defeated. The
course of oriental trade through Syria and Egypt was not in the least
molested by the Turks before the year 1516. Along the northern routes,
whose outlets were in their hands, they made no effort to stop the flow
of wares. In times of peace and order in Persia many caravans passed
east and west, exchanging wares from the Aegean Sea even to the far
interior of Asia. There continued also a regular movement north and
south to Aleppo, and thence to Bagdad and Mecca and the East. If the
Turks had hindered oriental trade, they had checked it but slightly.
During their frequent wars commerce was more or less disturbed; but the
wars usually ended in an increase of territory which furnished a wider
commercial opportunity.
Through Egypt and Syria, although disputes about the succession
to the Mameluke throne, occasional visitations of the plague, and
quarrels between natives and Europeans caused the volume of trade to
fluctuate, the old flow of oriental wares was maintained unbroken
down to 1502.[33] That year marks a new epoch. The galleys of Venice
found very few spices at Alexandria and Beirut; in 1504 they found
none at all.[34] The southern trade-routes of the Levant had been
emptied by the purchases of the Portuguese in India. From that year an
average of twelve or more ships left Lisbon annually for the East,[35]
and from 1507 the Portuguese sent fleets to blockade the mouths of
the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.[36] It was a deliberate attempt to
stop permanently the passage of wares along the old southern routes
of oriental trade, made not by Turks but by western Europeans, but it
was not entirely successful. The Venetian galleys which continued to
sail to the Levant usually found some spices to be bought. But the
old certainty was gone, and prices which were low at Lisbon were high
at Beirut and Alexandria.[37] The total quantity of spices which came
by the old routes from the East to Europe was greatly reduced. Venice
sent fewer ships to the Levant and deemed it imprudent to build new
galleys for the Eastern trade.[38] This was the situation when Selim I
overthrew the Mameluke sultans in 1516 and 1517. Instead of blocking
the southern routes further, he adopted the policy which the Mamelukes
had left him. He renewed the old treaties with Venice and the West, and
took over the intention of crushing the Portuguese naval power in the
Indian Ocean by a fleet sent down the Red Sea.[39]
After 1502, then, the carrying of spices from India to the Red
Sea and the Persian Gulf was interfered with by the Portuguese.
Nevertheless, besides the diminished amount of spices which was taken
by the Venetians and others from Aleppo and Alexandria for European
consumption, goods of the same class required in Arabia, Persia,
Turkey, and North Africa continued to travel by the old routes. In fact
this trade appears never to have ceased.[40] The Turkish conquest of
Egypt, far from creating a revolution in the Levant trade, caused only
a temporary disturbance of it, not unlike that caused previously by
the death of one Mameluke sultan and the accession of another.[41] The
real revolution was already accomplished. The beginning of the economic
decay of the Levant and of the decline of Venice and the Mediterranean
trading cities dates, not from the Turkish conquest of Egypt in 1517,
but, if its causes be not traced even earlier, from the doubling of the
Cape of Good Hope by the Portuguese in 1498.
In 1528 Francis I opened negotiations with Suleiman, and French ships
began to compete with those of Venice and Barcelona for spices at
Alexandria.[42] The 10 per cent duty which had been exacted by the
Mamelukes was presently reduced to 5, and later to 3 per cent.[43]
While the Turks despised the Venetians, as men who would endure
indignities rather than lose money, they respected the French, and
these rapidly gained on the Venetians and in time surpassed them in
amount of trade.[44]
In the thirties of the sixteenth century Suleiman undertook two great
projects which were evidently designed to open and secure the southern
trade-routes.[45] He captured Bagdad and the lands at the head of
the Persian Gulf, and he sent a fleet from Suez for an unsuccessful
attempt to expel the Portuguese from Diu in Gujarat. Thirty years
later Turkish power was extended on the east of the Red Sea to Aden,
and another expedition was sent out, which likewise failed to dislodge
the Portuguese from Diu. An active trade continued through Alexandria
and Aleppo; for instance, about the year 1550 most of the rhubarb used
in Europe came through the latter city.[46] It appears that in the last
quarter of the century, when Portugal passed into the hands of Philip
II of Spain, during an era of high prices, much of the prosperity of
the old southern routes returned, and there was a heavy traffic in
spices through the Turkish dominions.[47] But the more energetic Dutch
and English found their way also round the Cape, and rapidly drew the
Western traffic in spices again into that channel. They also opened
commercial relations with the Levant, which rivalled their trade with
the East. In the latter part of the seventeenth century they began
to bring pepper and spices even round Africa to the ports of the
Levant.[48] By this time the Venetian trade had fallen greatly,[49] but
the French maintained a place of commercial supremacy in the eastern
Mediterranean. In the eighteenth century few wares came through from
East to West, though silver passed in no small quantities in the
opposite direction. The coins of Spain, Germany, and Holland helped to
convey to western Europe the products of Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Persia; and the same coins served again to bring to Turkey and Persia
the spices, silks, and precious stones of the East.[50] Short haul
goods continued to move freely and in large quantities along most of
the old routes.[51]
There is evidence to indicate that no one of the shorter routes, had
there been no Turks nor any other nation on their lines to take toll
upon wares, could have competed for the trade of southern Asia with
western Europe against the Cape route. The land transit alone by the
Persian Gulf route seems to have cost more than the sea freight from
India to Europe.[52] A calculation made about the year 1800 shows that
a shipment from India to France by way of the Red Sea would probably
make a profit of 4 per cent., whereas the same consignment if sent
round the Cape would earn from 36 to 48 per cent.; if a Christian power
were in possession of the Red Sea and Egypt the gain by that route
would be not more than 10 per cent.[53] The Red Sea is so straight and
narrow, and so strewn with rocks and shallows, that sailing-vessels
have to wait for favourable winds and waste much time. The Indiamen
were not well adapted to this sea, so that transhipment was customary
at Aden, Mocha, or Jedda. There was always a transit by land, of some
ninety miles at the shortest (from Suez to Cairo), then a passage by
small vessel on the Nile, and another transhipment at Alexandria.
On the other hand the time necessary for a voyage between India and
Europe averaged not much less by the Cape route than by the Red
Sea.[54] Until the invention of the steamship, which could run straight
through the Red Sea without reference to the winds, and the excavation
of the Suez Canal, which eliminated the land transit, the Cape route
seems to have been cheaper than all others for long distance wares.[55]
It appears, then, that in the first of the two views set forth at the
beginning of this article, the relation of the Turks to the change of
the trade-routes has been misconceived. They were not active agents in
deliberately obstructing the routes. They did not by their notorious
indifference and conservatism greatly, if at all on the whole, increase
the difficulties of the oriental traffic. Nor did they make the
discovery of new routes imperative. On the contrary, they lost by the
discovery of a new and superior route. Had there been no way around
Africa the whole story of the Levant since 1500 might have been very
different. In the first place, the Mameluke sultans might have found
in their uninterrupted trade sufficient financial support to enable
them to resist successfully the attack of the Turks in 1516. But if
the Turks had conquered Egypt while the full stream of oriental trade
still ran through it, they must either have been deprived far sooner
than was actually the case of the control of these routes, or they
would have had to accommodate themselves to the great and increasing
trade through their dominions. In the latter case they might have been
forced into adopting modern ways, and into adding to their wonderful
capacity for territorial unification a parallel scheme of organizing
their trade. The decay of the lands of the Levant (neglecting the
hypothesis of climatic change) might have been arrested and reversed.
But there was a Cape route, and for three centuries and a half it took
the bulk of the oriental trade. Selim I and Suleiman, the greatest of
Ottoman conquerors, were powerless in their efforts to bring back the
lucrative flow of Eastern wares. The shifting of the trade-routes was
done, not by the Turks, but in their despite and to their disadvantage.
The desolation of Egypt and Syria, the decline of the Italian cities,
perhaps the very decay of the Ottoman empire itself, are due, not to
them, but to the great discoveries, in which, positively or negatively,
they had no discernible part.
A. H. LYBYER.
FOOTNOTES:
[*] All rights reserved.
[1] W. Heyd, _Le Colonie commerciali degli Italiani in Oriente nel
Medio Evo_, Venice, 1866-8. ii. 167.
[2] _Liber Secretorum Fidelium Crucis_ (in Bongars, _Gesta Dei per
Francos_, vol. ii, Hanover, 1611), p. 23.
[3] For the first three routes see Comte L. de Mas Latrie, _Privilge
commercial accord en 1320 la rpublique de Venise par un roi de
Perse, etc._, Bibl. de lcole des Chartes, xxxi (1870), 79-81. For the
last three routes see Marino Sanuto, _loc. cit._, pp. 3, 4, 22.
[4] W. Heyd, _Histoire da Commerce du Levant au Moyen ge_, translated
by Furcy Raynaud, Leipzig, 1885, ii. 156 ff., 215 ff.
[5] _Ibid._, ii. 72.
[6] Ibid., ii. 72 ff., 92 ff.; G. Finlay, _Hist. of Greece_, ed. by H.
F. Tozor, Oxford, 1878, iv. 352 ff.
[7] Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, i. 534 ff., especially 537, 542, 545,
550.
[8] Marino Sanuto, p. 23; Heyd, _Colonie commerciali_, ii. 224;
_Commerce du Levant_, ii. 58, 71, 438.
[9] Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, ii. 23 ff.; J. Delaville Le Roulx, _La
France en Orient au XIV^e Sicle_, Paris, 1885, pp. 13 ff.
[10] Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, ii. 188.
[11] _Ibid._, ii. 44 ff., 128, 505.
[12] According to J. E. Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture
and Prices in England_, iii, 518-43; iv. 680-91, Oxford, 1882, the
average price of pepper in England by decades from 1259 to 1580 was
as follows, in shillings per dozen pounds, pence being neglected: for
the thirteenth century, beginning with the seventh decade, 11, 12, 10,
16; for the fourteenth century, 12, 11, 15, 15, 19, 25, 17, 18, 11,
12; for the fifteenth century, 12, 32, 16, 13, 9, 13, 14, 14, 17, 17;
for the sixteenth century, 16, 16, 23, 23, 20, 32, 44, 34. The Vicomte
G. dAvenel, _Histoire conomique de la Proprit, des Salaires, des
Denres, et de tous less Prix en gnral, 1200-1800_, 5 vols., Paris,
1894-1912, iv. 482-6, 502-6, 598, gives the following prices for pepper
in France by periods of twenty-five years from 1300 to 1600, in francs
per kilogram; for the fourteenth century, 5.50, 12, 8, 19; for the
[30] Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, ii. 351; Savary, pp. 822, 827.
[31] Heyd. _Colonie commerciali_, i. 479.
[32] See the price averages, above, p. 680, note 12. The absence of
marked influence upon prices exerted by the conquest of Constantinople
by the Turks deserves special attention, since that conquest has been
imagined to have closed the routes of the Levant to such an extent as
to force the western Europeans to seek now routes. If this had been the
case the price of spices must have shown a marked increase between 1453
and 1498, which it did not do. Nor was it the agencies engaged in the
Mediterranean trade which sought the new routes, but Atlantic powers
in no relation with the Turks. It is not even certain that the desire
to profit from a more direct spice trade emerged in the consciousness
of western Europeans before 1490 (see H. Vignaud, _Histoire critique
de la Grande Entreprise de Christophe Colomb_, Paris, 1911, i. 213).
The entire hypothesis seems to be a legend of recent date, developed
out of the catastrophic theory which made the fall of Constantinople
an event of primary importance in the history of mankind. The great
discoveries had their origin in a separate chain of causes, into which
the influence of the Moslems of Spain, North Africa, and the Mameluke
empire entered, but not that of the Ottoman Turks.
[33] R. Fulin, _Diarii e Diaristi Veneziani_, Venice, 1881, pp. 155 ff.
(Dal Diario di Girolamo Priuli, 1494-1512); Marino Sanuto, _Diarii,
1496-1533_, Venice, 1879-1903; _passim._
[34] Fulin, pp. 165, 173, 175.
[35] Faria E. Souza, as epitomized by J. Briggs in his _History of
the Rise of the Mohamedan Power in India_, London, 1829, iv. 501 ff.
Of 114 ships sent in the first ten years 55 returned; Heyd, _Colonie
commerciali_, ii. 277.
[36] Albuquerque took Ormuz in 1507, and made an attempt on Aden in
1513. Lorenzo Almeida was killed while fighting the Mameluke fleet in
1508, and his father destroyed the Egyptian fleet in 1509. Thus began
a long struggle; in which the Portuguese tried to stifle the direct
trade between India and the Levant. See, for a general statement, Heyd,
_Colonie commerciali_, ii. 273.